Angelina Melnikova won a full set of medals at Euros in Glasgow – gold in the team competition, silver on vault and bronze on bars. She also made the floor final but was made a few mistakes and was unable to defend her floor title, finishing only 6th. After the event finals, Melnikova talked to the media about her experience at the championships.
Q: The European Championships are finished now, it was a successful competition for you. Are you happy with the results?
A: It was successful for me, I’m happy. I’m happy that I managed to show some consistency, that finally, I’m able to compete consistently. Of course, today on floor I didn’t do my turns well, but in general, I’m happy. I want to thank my coaches.
Q: You came to Glasgow as the team leader, the rest of the gymnasts weren’t so experienced. How did that role feel to you? Is it hard to be responsible not just for yourself but for the whole team as well?
A: I didn’t really see any difference because we’re all together, a team, we’re all close with the girls and there was no real difference.
Q: Regarding the floor final, was the 6th place fair or were the judges stingy with the scores?
A: I agree that I didn’t do my turns well and that’s why the difficulty went down and I didn’t show what I was supposed to. That explains the score. I think everything was fair.
Q: Usually, there’s about half a year between Euros and Worlds but this time it’s only two months. Will you be able to recover in time – both physically and mentally?
A: I think I will. It wasn’t so hard on me mentally. I’ll have some rest, about a week, and then I’ll go to another training camp.
Q: What do you feel about your silver medal on vault?
A: Actually, this medal is unexpected for me because I’ve never been so good on vault but my vaults got better now and we’ve been working on this event with my coaches, so I guess, that’s why it happened.
Q: How many hours a day do you spend on training vault?
A: It’s a difficult question. It depends, there are different training loads every day because I’m an all-arounder and it’s hard to pay a lot of attention to one event. So, it’s different every day but I guess it’s about an hour or 1.5 hours a day on average.
Q: And what do you feel about your bars medal?
A: This was also an unexpected medal for me because I’ve always thought that bars isn’t my event, it’s the hardest for me, so this was unexpected.
Q: Do you plan on adding any upgrades before the Worlds?
A: If my health will be fine, then perhaps there will be upgrades, but I won’t tell you on which events.
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
Gymnovosti is able to provide coverage of the European Championships thanks to the support from our patrons on Patreon.
She has really matured as a gymnast! So nice to see her evolution from being kinda the baby in Rio to being the leader. It really shows in her gymnastics. I really hope she is able to stay injury free over next 2 years. Bravo to her! She had a fantastic championship.